The more there are, the less they will be noticed. I don't think they make many people drive more carefully. If anything, they might distract someone who is looking at the memorial (instead of the road) and wondering what happened there.

Roadside memorials are like these candlelight vigils you see in the inner city when someone gets shot. It's more about attention seeking than producing anything meaningful. Grief, like prayer, should not be a public spectacle.

The people who put teddy bears or other stuffed animals at these roadside memorials are just wasting them. How about you buy a new teddy bear or stuffed animal and donate it to the police department or a hospital or the school social worker in the name of the deceased? Then the teddy bear or stuffed animal can do some good for a possibly traumatized child instead of getting moldy in the rain.

We should turn the entire country into one giant memorial. Every person everywhere who has ever died deserves to be remembered. Every person everywhere who has ever known anybody who died deserves to have their pain validated.

Patca is way more diplomatic than me. She called them tacky - I was gonna say they are white trashy. Especially when I go to a funeral and the youths are all wearing commemorative white T-shirts. Jeez whose idea was that?

That's 500 sinced 1998 for Tamapa Bay, a pretty big city. Less than 1 a week. When I was a kid, these things scared me because I thought since someone died there, I was more likely to die there. I sounds like Tamap Bay has a time limit, which makes sense to me.

I've always found these to be no more than obnoxious wallowing in self-pity. Stupid and embarrassing both. I put the people who post and maintain them right up there with those who want to go on TV to publicly wallow there.

The roadside memorials are a problem for many local governments. The hinder mowing crews and require manual trimming where the big gang mowers can't reach. And they become eyesores.

Near where I live one local government places steel signs to mark the area for the mowing crews. The signs say "Drive Safely, Don't Drive Drunk." I'm not sure whether that particular wording is used only when the fatality was a drunk driver or not. Eventually the decorations stop and after a while the county removes everything.

There are subtle ways to discourage these memorials. They are a touchy political issue. It's hard to say no to a greiving family. Subtle innuendo sometimes works better.

Sixty - I've seen quite a few of those rear window memorials. White, Old English style letters for the name (sometimes all caps which is really difficult in Old English fonts). I have seen about half for "yoots" and half for "Dad" or "Grandpa". I don't really see any for "Mom" or "Grandma" though.

In Montana they put little metal white crosses up along the road where people die. They are not memorials per se, they are reminders for traffic safety purposes. Sometimes you see a cluster of big crosses with several tiny crosses.

All I can tell you is there are lots of them. They are not on the federal interstates, but they are on all the state and county roads. If you are in Montana look for them. Once you realize what they are, you will be amazed how many there are.

I am surprised some group is not suing the State of Montana in putting up little crosses, but perhaps they put up little crescents, Stars of David, pentagrams, and other religious symbols if you are not Christian. Or maybe Christians are just really bad drivers.

I used to live in Raleigh. Not long after the opened the 540 Outer Beltline, a car load of high school kids hit the inner retaining wall in a curve. They were doing in excess of 100MPH and, as you can guess, none survived.

Within a day or so of the Highway Patrol finisning up their investigation the teddy bear memorials began to pop up and quickly got out of hand. Then the high schoolers started having these "cry-in's", which meant that they were parked along both sides of a 6 lane freeway with a 65 MPH speed limit. It was the place to be, even if your only connection to the event was that your best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night.

Luckily the county stopped it before it got too out of hand.

I have great sympathy for these folks, but those memorials are a public nuisance and should be outlawed.

kimsch said...The people who put teddy bears or other stuffed animals at these roadside memorials are just wasting them. How about you buy a new teddy bear or stuffed animal and donate it to the police department or a hospital....************The world will never have a teddy bear or other stuffed animal shortage as long as Chinese workers, coal tar, and a little petroleum derivatives are all you need to make them by the 100s of millions.

=================Fred4Pres said...The truth is we really do not want to be reminded too much of those who died. That is part of the reason why we bury them.

That and since caveman religion started we don't eat them if other protein is handy. And if we don't eat them they start to stink.

That and since caveman religion started we don't eat them if other protein is handy. And if we don't eat them they start to stink.

That taboo started long before caveman times. Most carnivore and omnivore animals will not eat their dead unless they are very hungry. But of course, every rule like that has an exception...

But I remember driving a girlfriend home late at night and she was driving me nuts (that is a very long story). We saw a dead possum in the road and its mate standing over it. She started crying and said it must be heart broken that its mate was killed. At that point the living possum ripped a chunk out of the dead one, tilted its head back and wolfed that chunk down.

I paused after witnessing this scene and then replied: "Yeah, your right. It seems really torn up about things."

So that taboo apparently does not extend to possums. I also broke up with that girl the next day.

I should say most mammals will not eat their own dead. Obviously reptiles and fish do not seem too upset doing so. And chickens? Chickens are canibals at heart. But the lower you go down the evolutionary chain, the more likely they will go for an easy meal.